CHANGES IN THE IMAGE OF THE FEMININE FROM GIOTTO TO RAPHAEL Research Essay submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the degree of MASTER OF FINE ART AT RHODES UNIVERSITY by ELIZABETH ELLEN CROSSLEY 1985 Typing by Lee Aldag CHANGES IN THE IMAGE OF THE FEMININE FROM GIOTTO TO RAPHAEL CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ~hapter 1. Social and Economic Background. Chapter 2. Images of the Virgin and Religious Women. Chapter 3. Images of Mythological and Classical Women. Chapter 4. Images of Real Women-Portraits. Chapter 5. Conclusions on changes in the image of the feminine. Bibliography. i INTRODUCTION The ideal of femininity which developed in Renaissance painting, was a visual and psychological type which was to become the Western European Christian formu la of the feminine. This type has surv ived until the present day, so a discussion of its orIgIns can be revealing for us in the twentieth century, especially as it has been neglected in traditional art historical works. In this essay, the changes in the image of the feminine, in just under three hundred years of Florentine painting, starting with Giotto1. and ending with Raphael~· will be covered. The images will be taken from the wo rk of artists who were Florentine in training, who worked in the city or who were strongly influenced by the Florentine style of painting. I have divided the paintings I have studied into three sections. In the Religious section the paintings are mainly of Mary. The Mythologica l images refer to Greek and Roman myths and the humanistic interpretations of them. Finally, the Portrait and Genre images are se lected on the following basis: In the genre paintings they are sometimes part of works related to religion or mythology, but, in their handling, the painters treat the figures as real human beings rather than holy or mythological figures. In others they are bona fide portrait representations.3. I have made the above distinction because I expect that the gap between religio-mythological images and portraits will give some indication of the difference between the ideal and the reality for women of that time. The images will be analysed and changes noted in favoured types, gestures, expressions, movements, placing in the composition, relationships to others, favoured themes, costume, colour and symbols. I wil l point out as I proceed the effects that these elements had on the mood and tone of each image. To see the representational images of women in painting in relation to the role and position of women in everyday life in the said period, the first chapter sketches in the relevant social and economic background. 1. Giotto di Bondone, painter, c. 1266 - 1377. 2. Raphael Sanzio, painter, 1483 -1520. 3. All these images will hereafter be referred to as 'portraits.' 1. CHAPTER ONE. The idea of progress in every area of life and the Rena i ssance as a golden age was promulgated by historians from Vasari (1511 - 1574)1. onwards. These ideas of Renaissance society were emphasised parti­ cularly by the art historians of the nineteenth century. The approach of Vasari and Burckhardt2. has been followed by Mrs Brownlow Jameson 3. and Sir Kenneth Clark4. in the twentieth century. One of the unquestioned and underlying ideas of the quoted historical .,orks, is the equal position of women in Renaissance society. Burck­ hardt makes the following statement: "To understand the higher forms of social intercourse at this period, we must keep before our minds the fact that women stood on a foot ing of perfect equality with men." 5. He feels that it is misleading to pay too much attention to the diatribes against women and continues, "there was no question of 'women ' s rights' or female emanCipation, simply because the thing itself was a matter of course. ,,6. In accepting the above statements, other art historians have perpetuated the type of women that they analysed in art and assumed to have lived in the Renaissance. But women's reality was far from being equal with men's. Thp. Ren aissance did develop a new type of society7. and may have been a step forward for men, but it was not positive for women. 8. 1. Vasari. Lives of the Artists. Vol. 1 and 2 2. Burckhardt. J. The Clvlltsation of the Renaissance in Italy. 3. Jameson, A.B. Legends of the Madonna. 4. Clark, K. FlorentIne PaInt Ings (Also see Bibliography.) 5. Burckhardt. op. CIt. p.240. 6. Ibid. p. 240. 7. There was a break from the old feuda l society and the aristocratic hierarchy, a development of the power of the indi vidua l and inquir­ ing, scientific attitudes, as well as the power of capital over birth, which brought the middle class into power. 8. "It would seem t hat such a period of liberation and individualisa­ tion could not but be advantageous for women, yet it is Renaissance men who who remains the primary beneficiary of all the rebirths and reforms. " Peterson, K. Women Artists, p.22 "The first is that there IS less change in the noti on of women throu­ ghout the Renaissance than intellectual ferment and empirical enqu iry of var ious kinds might lead one to expect. The second is that, at the end of the Renaissance, there is a greater discrepancy between social realities and the current notion of women than at the begin­ ning." Maclean, J. The Renajssance Not jon of Woman, p.1. 2. Before it is possible to identify the changes that took place in the images of women in paintings during the period, one has to realise that they have to read against the trend towards reducing still further the few establi shed social and economic rights of women. That is, the change was relative to the gain in rights for men, who benefitted from the growth of individual freedoms, but at the same time they infringed those of woman, leading to an ever increasing gap between the rights and social power of the two sexes. The dominant ideology reduced the role of women in the society, denying working class women the right to join the guilds, reduced the sphere of influence in public and private life of middle-class women, though this latter group were somewhat less reduced than others!' This reduction of freedoms and the reasoning behind it, can be seen in litera­ ture. humanist writings and educational and religious theory. The theories are the result of other changes with the society. The acc­ elerated change which took place in the Renaissance, enforced by the deve­ lopment of early capitalism, can be seen in Florence more easily than else­ where .2. As Hauser states , "Capital rules more ru t hlessly and less troubled by scruples than ever before or after in the history of Europe." 3. The economic boom came to a climax in 1328 - 38 and led to a financial cri s is, followed by a period of stagnation. The Capitalist ideology was born, bringing with it the profit motive and middle-class virtues of con­ servative respectability. This led to be the major victims of the cu l­ tural counter-tendencies which were produced by the Renaissance society, a social structure which underwent a radical revolution. The Renaissance was predominantly a male age. Ruth Kelso remarks that the gentlemen of the Renaissance differed greatly from the knight of the Middle Ages. "but their wives would have found little to wonder at in Footnote continued from p. 1. "Women , or at least exceptionally gifted women were freer and less sub­ ject to institutional and social pressures in the middle ages than they have been under the rule of the individual which was promulgated with the Renaissance." Hess. T.B. Art and Sexual Politics, p. 47. 1. See Antal, F. FlorentIne PaInting and its Social Background. This theme is developed throughout the volume. 2. Hauser. A. A Social History of Art. Vol. 2, p. 281. 3. lb i d . p. 281. 3. each other. ,,1. Women lost in the var iety of their roles and respon­ sibilities , their contribution to the economy and their legal status as compared with the Middle Ages. And because "women were paid less for jobs outside the home than they had previously earned working at home" there was a severe drop in the economic standing of women. 2. Furthermore , the imbalance in t he population favoured men .3. Because of this there were more women to compete for marriage in the case of the upper and middle class and labour outside the home, in a stagnant economy,4. in the case of the working class. The situation for women became more difficult with the decision of the fifteenth century guilds for crafts to exclude women, a right they had had before. All these factors may have been responsible for a rise in prostitution. At the same time as bureaucratised government and commercial capitalism eroded women' s roles in politics and economy and changed their position in real life, a trend developed in the ideological vision as represented by the arts, which established new and different images as compared with the Middle Ages. 5. I would like to look at diaries and theories about women, which show to some extent prevalent ideas about women held by men at the time. Most of these relate to middle class women and show how they were being more and more limited even within their home sphere. In the diaries5. one sees women becoming more subserviant to her husband, purely a homemaker who has no part in his affairs. Women were subser- 1.